Decks — those one-sentence summaries under the headline — do the heavy lifting on webpages.

Indeed, according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study of reader behavior:

• 95% of webpage visitors read all or part of the deck. That’s huge when compared with any other element on the page.
• Visitors spend five to 10 seconds, on average, looking at the deck.That seems like a flash, but it’s actually a substantial investment in a scanner’s time.
• Decks “may be the only thing many readers view,” Eyetrack III researchers say.

If you want visitors to pay attention to your point, the researchers say, put it in the deck. Yet too many corporate communicators drop this power tool of communication.

Why decks?

No doubt about it: Decks are power tools of communication. Decks are important because they:

• Orient visitors at a glance, letting them know whether they’ve arrived at the right place.
• Offer a second layer of detail to scanners who don’t read word-by-word.
• Take a load off (and words out of) the headline.

(Not sure what the deck is? The deck for this piece is “Because it’s the best-read element on the page.”)

Put your message where your deck is.

Once you’ve gained attention in the headline, use the deck to sell the story. To write an effective deck:

1. Explain your message in one sentence.

Make it a full sentence.

2. Telegraph a single point.

Choose a secondary angle deck to go with news headlines, a summary deck to go with feature and benefits headlines.

3. Tell, don’t tease.

Don’t try to trick visitors into reading the page. Instead, summarize the page so well that visitors can get the gist of the story without reading the text.

4. Don’t repeat yourself.

A deck is an extension of the headline. It should expand on the headline, not duplicate it. So don’t repeat a single word from the headline in the deck.

This is San Francisco real estate. Make each word do new work. (Besides, repeating words in the head and deck may be a clue that you’re saying the same thing twice. Force yourself to revise repetitious layers of information.)

5. Use sentence-structure capitalization.

Sentence Capitalization is Fresher and More Contemporary than Title Capitalization.

But don’t include a period.

6. Keep it short.

Aim for 14 words or fewer. That length is easy for people to read and understand, according to research by the American Press Institute.

People read decks because they’re short and easy to scan. If your deck becomes a paragraph, it will lose its power to attract.

Don’t drop the deck.

This second layer of headline is essential to communicate to today’s audience of flippers and skimmers.

So don’t drop the deck — from webpages, news releases, blog posts and other pieces. Why skip the most important element of your piece?

The post Why write a multi-deck headline? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Think of subheads as the icing on the cake.

Skimmers look at subheads to learn what content you’re offering on a web page, blog post or news release. This creates the layer cake eye-gazing pattern — on an eyetracking heat map, it shows up as a series of horizontal lines.

That helps visitors find what they want quickly.

Without subheads to guide the way, web visitors either skim the first line (or less) of each paragraph in the F-shaped eye-gazing pattern or hunt around for individual words in the spotted pattern. Both of those are inefficient ways for skimmers to find what they want.

“By far, the single most important thing you can do to help users consume content is to use meaningful [subheads], and make [them] visually pop as compared to body text,” write Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, the authors of How People Read on the Web.

“The reader who sees the big parts is more likely to remember the whole story.”

— Roy Peter Clark, The Poynter Institute

Why subheads?

And no wonder. In addition to changing visitors’ eye-gazing patterns, good subheads can help you:

1. Draw readers in. A compelling subhead can turn skimmers into readers.
2. Help people find what they want quickly. Web visitors skim web pages, looking at subheads first to find sections of copy they’re looking for, before reading the paragraphs below.
3. Break copy up. Good subheads break copy up into accessible, bite-sized chunks. And when your message looks easier to read, more people will read it.
4. Keep readers reading. “Subheads increased reading for skimmers and for those whose attention was beginning to wane,” according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack III study.
5. Communicate to nonreaders. Well-written subheads can convey your key ideas to flippers, skimmers and others who won’t read your paragraphs, no matter what.
6. Keep readers on your page. If they can’t find what they’re looking for on your page, they’re likely to go back to Google to find a page that gives them what they want.
7. Help visitors read and understand. Subheads “make it vastly easier for users to read and understand web pages,” Pernice, et al., say.
8. Make your message more memorable. “A writer who knows the big parts can name them for the reader” with subheads, writes Roy Peter Clark, senior scholar at The Poynter Institute. “The reader who sees the big parts is more likely to remember the whole story.”

Five more reasons for subheads

Indeed, any story of any significant length should have subheads, says Roy Peter Clark. Clark, The Poynter Institute’s editorial guru, says those subheads can:

1. Create an index for the story
2. Offer a distinctive point of entry into the piece
3. Ventilate the gray page with white space
4. Let the writer test the coherence of the piece
5. Give the reader the global structure of the piece at a glance

This is a job for the writer, not the designer, Clark says. The writer should produce or at least suggest the subheads.

Don’t drop the subheads.

Whatever you do, don’t drop online subheads.

“If you are not calling out sections of your web pages or prose on those pages with subheads, you are making a big mistake!” write Pernice et al. “If you take nothing else [away], please take this: Use subheads and subsubheads.”
___

Source: Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen; How People Read on the Web: The Eyetracking Evidence; Nielsen Norman Group; Sept. 10, 2013

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Subheads tell readers what content exists on a page and how different sections relate to the others. That guides readers to the copy they want to read and shows them how the parts fit together.

To make the most of your subheads’ ability to guide and instruct readers, make sure you:

1. Give equal emphasis to items of equal importance.

Give all “level one” headlines the same type treatment, and treat all “level two” subheads the same. That way, readers can determine the topic’s weight and hierarchy at a glance.

2. Contrast subheads from text, other display copy.

Make sure readers can’t mistake subheads for body copy, callouts or decks. To make the contrast clear, you might use:

• Font
• Type style
• Type size
• Color
• Alignment
• Graphic accents

3. Save the widows and orphans.

Don’t end a column or page with a subhead. Instead, make sure there are at least three lines of body copy before a column or page break.

4. Keep them short.

Don’t take the “micro” out of the microcontent: Limit subheads to one line. Longer, and they’ll start looking like text, not display copy. Then you’ll lose the attention-grabbing power of subheads.

The post What’s the best subheading format? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

The other day, I found a blog post of interest to me: “Maximizing student productivity: Tips for successful internship programs.”

My intern was scheduled to arrive in three minutes, so I quickly skimmed the story. I read the subheads: “Tip No. 1,” they said. “Tip No. 2. Tip No. 3.”

What were the tips? I’ll never know. Because the writer didn’t make the most of the powerful tools that are subheads.

Subheads have magical properties.

What if I told you there was a magic wand that kept readers reading and skimmers scanning — even after their attention begins to wane?

Friends, there is such a tool, and it’s called a subhead.

“Write subheads that reveal, rather than conceal, your contents.”

— Ann Wylie, writing coach, Wylie Communications

Great subheadings are mini headlines that grab reader attention and help skimmers get the gist of the message.

But label subheads — those that classify the topic but don’t say anything about it — don’t communicate much at all.

So instead of just labeling a section of your copy with the topic — “Mortgage services,” for instance, or “Tip. No. 1” — tell the reader something.

What about mortgage services? What is Tip No. 1?

To get the word out via subheads:

1. Make thinking visual.

Think of your subheads as the Roman numeral outline of your piece. What are your topics I, II and III? Those are your subheads.

So organize your message into a series of sections and subsections. Label the sections with subheads (“Make thinking visual,” in this story, for instance), the subsections with bullets or bold-faced lead-ins (“Acknowledge the event,” on this page).

When one of my clients wanted to lend support after some of its employees endured a fire, subheads included:

• Acknowledge the event.
• Listen. Don’t ask questions or seek details.
• Offer long-term emotional support.
• Offer practical support.
• Watch for reactions.

Any questions?

Write subheads that reveal, rather than conceal, your contents.

2. Don’t write ‘read below’ subheads.

If your subheads say “Problem,” “Solution” and “Result,” you’re telling readers, “read below to find out what the problem, solution and results are.”

But they’re not reading. They’re skimming!

Instead of trying to force skimmers to read, write robust subheads that define the problem, solution and results. Concisely describe the content within each section in a subhead. Use simple, understandable words. Test: Could your grandma understand it?

3. Answer, don’t just ask, questions.

If you raise a question in the subhead, answer it in display copy — a bold-faced lead-in, highlighted key words or a bulleted list, maybe.

If your subhead asks, “Why subheads?” for instance, you might answer the question in a list with bold-faced lead-ins:

• Keep readers reading.
• Communicate to nonreaders.
• Draw readers in.
• Break copy up.
• Make messages memorable.

Otherwise, your question is essentially saying “read below to find out.” And we know skimmers want to skim, not read.

Bottom line: If you ask a question in the display copy, you need to answer the question in the display copy.

4. Set up the next section.

Don’t summarize what you’ve already covered, but preview the best of what is to come.

5. Don’t repeat other microcontent.

Avoid using the same words and phrases you’re using in headlines, captions and callouts. Your subheadings help you get the word out to flippers and skimmers. This is San Francisco real estate: Don’t say the same thing twice.

6. Make them compelling.

Write compelling subheads. Choose your words carefully. Craft subheads using intriguing phrases, interesting words.

7. Use subheads frequently.

Use at least one on a short (10- to 12-paragraph) story, recommend the folks at the BBC News Academy. Longer story? Include a subhead every four to six paragraphs.

Note that you’ll have a subhead for each topic in the body of your story, plus one subhead to separate the body from the conclusion (for this story: Don’t drop the subheads.) So if you have three topics, you’ll have four subheads.

8. Keep them short.

Limit subheads to one line — on your phone. (Tip: Email your message to yourself and check it on your mobile to make sure.) That probably means up to five words.

Longer, and they’ll start looking like text, not display copy. And then you’ll lose the attention-grabbing power of subheads.

9. Grab the eye.

“Subheads only get looked at if they actually look like subheads,” write Pernice, et al. “If the sections and their subheads are not different enough, then people will not be able to use them as the lighthouses they are meant to be.”

So once you’ve written subheads, make them eye-catching with larger text, bold-faced type, color, more white space. Make sure there’s plenty of contrast between the text and background, and avoid putting an image behind the text.

But don’t make them distracting.

It’s the Goldilocks rule: Use just enough to set them apart from plain text. Use too much formatting, and they’ll distract skimmers from the rest of the page. Use too little formatting, and skimmers won’t look at them.

Don’t drop the subheads.

Online, writing subheads “may be the most important thing you do” to get readers to read and help skimmers skim. So don’t drop the subheads.

___

Sources: “Writing for mobile: Bite-size basics,” BBC Academy, Dec. 2, 2014

Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen; How People Read on the Web: The Eyetracking Evidence; Nielsen Norman Group; Sept. 10, 2013

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Too often, communicators crank out captions (aka cutlines) in the 15 minutes before happy hour on a Friday night.

Their loss.

“Too often, [captions] are the first thing the reader reads (sometimes even before the headlines),”  writes the late communication trainer Steve Buttry, “and the last thing [news organizations] slap together.”

Handled well, captions can be workhorses of communication. That’s because:

• Images get the most viewership on a page. That makes the caption, or caption under the image, a power point for communication. (And no, you don’t need to be National Geographic or offer time-lapse photography for this to be true!)
• Captions get 16% more readership than text.
• Telling people what to look for in a picture increased comprehension, according to research by W.H. Levie and R. Lentz.
• Adding captions to a series of cartoons increased recall by 81%, according to a study by Richard E. Mayer, et al. And it reduced problem solving, or the ability to apply the information, by 66%.
• Text that’s larger or bolder than body copy gets more readership. Caption style stands out from the text.

As a result, captions offer an opportunity to draw the reader in and communicate to flippers and skimmers.

Captions “can be to stories what trailers are to movies — intriguing, compelling previews,” says Monica L. Moses, deputy managing editor/visuals for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

So don’t slap yours together at the last minute.

Catch readers with captions

Here are 12 ways to make the most of social media and other captions:

1. Include a caption with every image.

Yep, every image. Even if:

• It’s a small image.
• The reader can easily tell what the image is.
• It’s a conceptual illustration.

Why?

Because you’re not writing captions to explain what’s in the picture. You’re writing captions to draw readers in and communicate to flippers and skimmers.

2. Write subject, verb, object.

Call them “action captions.” The way to capture the action is with a simple sentence and active verb. Which means you need to …

3. Avoid label captions.

That’s where you simply describe what’s in the photo, such as “Bill, 42, holds a fish.” Even worse: “Loring Leifer, president, WordsWorth Communications.”

“Don’t insult your readers,” writes Gregg McLachlan, associate managing editor of the Simcoe Reformer. “If you have a photo of an environmentalist standing next to a fence at a toxic dump site, don’t write, ‘John Johnson is standing next to the fence …’”

Instead, use the photo as a jumping-off point to …

4. Deliver a key message.

Go beyond just identifying the people in the picture. Skip, “Bill, 42, holds a fish.” Readers know what they’re seeing — you don’t need to tell them.

Instead, encapsulate one of your key ideas into the caption. More people will get it than if you just run it in the body copy.

5. Add a catchline.

A catchline is a mini “headline” for your caption. Adding one increases caption readership. The catchline on here is “Reach ‘em where their eyes are”:

Reach ’em where their eyes are Captions can be workhorses of communications — but only if you use them and use them well.

6. Compliment the other display copy.

Captions work as a package with headlines, subheads, callouts and the other display copy on the page. Don’t repeat or contradict what you say in the other display elements.

7. Answer reader questions.

If the CEO is wearing a cast, explain why. Otherwise, readers will be distracted by wondering.

8. Use a special typeface.

Make the caption larger or bolder than the text. That will increase readership.

9. Use the present tense.

Give a sense of immediacy. Write your caption as if it’s happening now. (No need to include the date.)

“Your caption represents a specific moment in time captured by a photograph,” McLachlan says. “The photo is the window that takes readers to the scene and captures ‘live’ action.”

10. Keep it short.

Limit the length to 14 to 21 words. If your caption doesn’t look brief and scannable, it will lose its ability to attract.

11. Avoid awkward navigation.

If you’re writing “Bottom photo, clockwise from top left,” there’s too much going on.

“Don’t write, ‘John Johnson, second from left in the middle row starting next to the boiler room door opposite the men’s washroom,’” McLachlan counsels. “Don’t turn your cutline into a maze.”

12. Expand the caption into a mini-story.

Given the power of images and captions, why not run an entire super-short story under the photo? Cover the 5 W’s, or at least the who, what, when and where. That will transform your photos and captions into little information modules.
____

Sources: Steve Buttry, “Writing Alluring Cutlines,” NoTrain-NoGain.org

Mario R. Garcia and Pegie Stark, Eyes On the News: The Poynter Institute Color Research, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 1991

Peter S. Houts, Cecilia C. Doak, Leonard G. Doak,  Matthew J. Loscalzo, “The Role of Pictures in Improving Health Communication: A Review of Research on Attention, Comprehension, Recall, and Adherence” (PDF), Patient Education and Counseling, vol. 61, 2006, p.173-190.

W.H. Levie, R. Lentz, “Effects of text illustrations: a review of research,” ECTJ1982, vol. 30, pp. 195-232

Richard E. Mayer, William Bove, Alexandra Bryman, Rebecca Mars, and Lene Tapangco, “When Less is More: Meaningful Learning From Visual and Verbal Summaries of Science Textbook Lessons,” Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 88, No. 1, 1996, pp. 64-73.

Gregg McLachlan, “10 Tips for Better Cutlines: Improve Your Captions Today,” NoTrain-NoGain.org

Monica L. Moses, “Sell Stories! Write Great Captions,” More Eyes on the News, The Poynter Institute, Jan. 10, 2002

The post How to write a good photo caption appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Pull quotes — aka callouts, breakout quotes or pullout quotes — are “the print equivalent of a sound bite,” according to the authors of The Newsletter Editor’s Desk Book

Actually, I think they’re more like movie trailers. They show just enough of the best stuff to entice readers to buy a ticket for the full show.

And that’s the power of a provocative pull quote. If it’s juicy enough, it can convince someone who’s already decided to skip the story to give it another chance.

Pull quotes increase reading and more.

Why callouts? Because they:

1. Increase reading

In 2004, two Swedish researchers used an eyetracking lab to find out how readers view elements like callouts. After tracking 26 readers as they viewed 34 Nordic newspaper pages, the researchers found that pull quotes pull readers into the article. Specifically, readers:

• Viewed stories with callouts before those without
• Read the callouts, usually right after they read the headline

2. Boost communication

In a survey of academic research on pull quotes, two professors at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill report that readers:

• Better understand the important parts of a story when pull quotes draw their attention to important information
• Are persuaded by the viewpoints represented in the callouts
• Remember more information from vehicles that use more callouts
• Find channels more enjoyable and readable if they use more callouts

Plus, pull quotes make messages more memorable, according to David Ogilvy’s research. “They are above average in recall tests,” he wrote in Ogilvy on Advertising.

3. Multiply clicks

One blogger saw 800 clicks on a single tweetable quote, reports Kevin Lee of Fast Company

4. Make your message look easier to read

Pull quotes break up the text, providing visual relief. And if it looks easier to read, more people will read it.

How to write an effective pull quote

To make the most of this power point on your page:

1. Choose the most provocative point in the story.

What’s your movie trailer? What’s going to transform committed nonreaders into readers?

When my team writes these design elements for our health care system clients, we don’t focus on the moment Grandpa came home well. Instead, we focus on the most dire moment in Grandpa’s illness:

“It felt like somebody stuck a knife in me and kept turning it.”

Remember: Your callout doesn’t have to be a quote. If it’s not, drop the quotations marks.

2. Use “tweetables.”

Tools like ClickToTweet present important quotes visually and increase clicks and shares.

3. Keep the pull quote in context. 

Callouts carry persuasive weight, so make sure they reflect the point you’re trying to make.

4. Place pull quotes carefully. 

To avoid frustrating readers looking for the quote in the text, place these graphic elements:

• Near the quote in the text
• Before the quote appears in the in text
• In the same order that the quotes appear in the text

“The goal is to draw readers into your pages and to sell them on what’s ahead,” writes John Brady, “not to make them feel like they are watching a re-run.”

5. Keep pull quotes short. 

Limit it to 10 to 20 words or two to four lines. Even better: Bring it in at under 280 characters to encourage tweeting.

“The long-winded pull quote is more likely to turn off readers than sell them on the story,” Brady writes. “Short quotes often look like an eye chart when they dribble down a page; long quotes create a dense-pack look after four lines. In both instances, readability is endangered.”

6. Don’t reveal the ending. 

“Pull quotes that give away the ending are counterproductive,” Brady writes. “As editorial marketing devices, pullquotes are intended to keep the reader in the story right to the last paragraph. Most readers still like to believe in Santa’s clauses. They want to discover what’s under the editorial tree for themselves.”

Finally, don’t drop the pull quotes. These power tools are far too valuable for communicators to ignore.

___

Sources: John Brady, “The Power of Pull Quotes,” Folio:, Nov.1, 2005

Jana Holsanova and Kenneth Holmqvist, “Looking at the Net News: Eye Tracking Study of Net Paper Reading,” Mediekulturer (Stockholm), 2004, pp. 216-48

Rhonda Gibson, Joe Bob Hester and Shannon Stewart, “Pull Quotes Shape Reader Perceptions of News Stories,” Newspaper Research Journal, March 22, 2001

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I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.

The sad truth is, most of your readers will never read the fourth paragraph of your brilliant copy. But many more will read your display copy.

Here’s why:

1. They’re not reading; they’re looking.

Back in the day, web-usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote one of the first articles on writing for the web. The headline:

How users read on the web

The first paragraph:

They don’t.

“People read paper,” writes T.J. Larkin, principal of Larkin Communications. “They use the web.”

Indeed, 96% of the time people visit your website, they’re looking for something specific, according to a Xerox PARC critical incident study.

They:

• Collect 71% of the time. They’re gathering multiple pieces of information — researching a webinar or blog post, maybe, or trying to find the best refrigerator for their tiny house.
• Find 25%. They’re looking for a specific piece of information, such as the address of a restaurant.
• Explore 2%. We used to call this surfing, or just browsing around the web.
• Monitor 2%. They might return to BBC.com, for instance, to keep up with the latest news.

That makes searching for information the No. 2 mobile task, according to Raluca Budiu and Jakob Nielsen, in User Experience for Mobile Applications and Websites. (No. 1 mobile task: killing time.)

What they’re not doing: reading. In fact, 79% of web visitors scan, according to Sun Microsystems research. Just 16% read word-by-word.

2. They don’t spend much time on your message.

One way we know they’re not reading: They don’t spend enough time with your message to read it.

How much time do they spend?

The average web page visit lasts a little less than a minute, according to 2011 research by the Nielsen Norman Group. (Often, visits last only 10-20 seconds.) That’s enough time, Nielsen figures, to read about 25% of each page.

“People spend less than a minute on content pages,” Nielsen writes, “even when they’re looking at long articles or detailed product specs.”

That’s the good news.

Make that 15 seconds. Some 55% of web visitors spent fewer than 15 seconds on the web pages they visited, according to a 2014 Chartbeat analysis of 2 billion visits across the web.

Filter purely for blog posts or article pages, and “only” 33% of web visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a page.

Figuring that people read about 200 words per minute, at 15 seconds per visit, that’s about 50 words per web page.

Make that 20% of the words on the page, according to research by four professors from two German universities. For the study, the professors fitted 25 European computer scientists, psychologists, sociologists, engineers and other highly educated professionals with eyetracking devices to use while they went about their daily lives.

They collected 50,000 page views, which were then analyzed by the Nielsen Norman Group. From that analysis NNG found that:

• On average, web visitors read half the information on web pages with 111 words or less.
• As the word count goes up, so too does the amount of time visitors spend on a page. But reading time doesn’t keep up with the additional word count. Web visitors spend only 4.4 seconds more for each additional 100 words. Assuming an average reading time of 200 words per minute, that’s only about 15% of the additional words.
• Web visitors spent enough time to read at most 28% of the words on a web page during an average visit. However, Nielsen says, they don’t spend all that time reading. It’s more likely, he estimates, that visitors read only 20% of the words on the average web page.

How much of your message are they really reading?

3. Their eyes are drawn to display copy

So which words are they reading?

People read the display copy. Eyes are drawn to:

• Headlines
• Decks
• Subheads
• Captions
• Callouts
• Links
• Lists
• Highlighted key words

That’s right. Most of the impact you make on your readers comes, not from the paragraphs itself, but from the display copy.

People look first at photos, headlines and links. Online, readers look at directional devices, such as navigational bars, links and teasers, first, according to The Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack07 study.

Readers of broadsheets (such as The New York Times) look at headlines first. Readers of tabloids (such as the New York Daily News) look at photos first.

Note what doesn’t make the list: Paragraphs.

How are using these primary entry points to pull readers into your message?

Display copy draws eyes in print. Here’s what readers “process,” or see, in print, according to “Eyes On the News,” a study by The Poynter Institute:

• Artwork: 80%
• Photos: 75%
• Headlines: 56%
• Briefs: 31%
• Captions: 29%
• Text: 25% (This number is actually high, the researchers said, because testing prototypes produce better numbers than real publications.)

There’s no doubt about it: The biggest ROI you’re going to get on your writing time and effort in any medium is the work you put into your display copy.

Make the most of your display copy.

With well-written display copy, you can:

• Draw readers in by pointing out interesting facts that can transform flippers and skimmers into readers.
• Break copy up, making it look easier to read. And the easier it looks to read, the more likely people will read it.
• Communicate to nonreaders by lifting your ideas off the page or screen.
• Help readers remember. Average students remember more from reading pieces that include “signaling” devices like display copy than from those that don’t, found reading researcher Bonnie J. F. Meyer in a 1979 study. Use this display copy superpower to cement your ideas in your readers’ heads, as well.

Do you have a system for reaching nonreaders with display copy? If not, how are you reaching the 79% of your visitors who don’t read paragraphs?

The post Why is micro content important? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Users look for links on pages like puppies look for your best shoes.

Or so say Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen, the authors of How People Read on the Web.

They should know. The authors studied more than 300 people using hundreds of different websites for a total of 1.5 million fixations — or “looks” — and recordings that comprise more than 300 GB of data.

Links have superpowers …

Here are some other reasons that links matter:

1. Readers look at links.

Web visitors typically focus on link text when they scan a page, writes Marieke McCloskey, a user experience specialist with Nielsen Norman Group.

Want to put your key messages where readers’ eyes are?

Embed them in your clickable elements — links, story lists and teaser text, according to Eyetrack07, a Poynter Institute eye-tracking study. Those elements account for nearly half the “eye stops” — we non-scientists call this “looking” — on the web.

This finding gives us one more reason to write better links. Links draw web visitors’ eyes — and skimmers don’t read the surrounding text — so it’s essential to make yours more substantive than Click here or Read more.

Focus your attention on links, story lists and teaser copy. That’s where you’re most likely to reach readers online.

2. Links are scannable.

Users often skim for links and headings before they read other elements, according to Pernice et al. And they use links not just to get somewhere, but also to get a sense of what the page is about.

3. Links help SEO.

Search engines use linked anchor text as one clue to what the page or document is about. So good link writing can help boost your search-engine ranking.

4. Links increase social media reach and influence.

Links increase followers and are more likely to be retweeted, according to research by viral marketing scientist Dan Zarrella.

Get tips for linking on social media.

5. Links are a service to visitors.

Worried that external links might lead your visitor to another site?

“In online media, relevant links are always a service,” writes Amy Gahran, media consultant and content strategist. “In fact, if you mention something in a story for which you could include a relevant direct link and fail to do so, you’re probably only going to frustrate and eventually alienate your online audience.”

6. Links increase credibility.

Links to other sites increase credibility by more than 30%, writes Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group.

Providing links to other sites “is a sign of confidence, and third-party sites are much more credible than anything you can say yourself,” he writes. “Isolated sites feel like they have something to hide.”

7. Links get reciprocated.

Finally, Gahran says, you get what you give on the web.

Inbound links are essential to both website traffic and SEO. Visitors arriving by way of a link from a third party are more likely to pay closer attention to your site.

“If you don’t give many relevant links,” Gahran writes, “it’s unlikely you’ll get many in return.”

… But links are distracting.

Laura Miller has joined the growing movement toward delinkification. Instead of embedding links in the body of her columns, the senior editor at Salon is listing them at the bottom.

Why this movement against embedded links like this one? Among them:

1. Links are distracting.

Always have been. That split second we spend asking ourselves, “click?” draws our attention away from the copy and makes it harder for us to follow the writer’s train of thought.

And that doesn’t count the cognitive juice we spend when we actually do click — even if we don’t take topical sidebars. Somehow, in the course of researching this piece, for instance, I learned about Amazon’s new PayPhrase and visited the blog of a “mild-mannered, 28-year-old, former econ nerd.”

Links “foster a kind of attention deficit disorder, creating casual, easily distracted surfers instead of committed, engaged readers,” writes Jan H. Spyridakis, professor at the University of Washington College of Engineering.

We now know that that distraction follows us from the browser into the boardroom, thanks to Nicholas Carr’s book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Pointing and clicking our way through the hyperworld, it seems, makes it harder for us to concentrate in the real one.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes. What are other problems with links?

2. It’s harder to get clicked on mobile.

Half of your audience members now visit your web pages, look at your email messages and browse your social media channels via their mobile devices, not their laptops. Problem is, mobile readers click 40% less often, according to Mailchimp.

Blame Fat Fingers/No Bars Syndrome. After spending a few hundred seconds waiting for a page to load on our smartphones before our streetcar stop, we’ve learned better than to try to click the right tiny button on our phones.

As a result, a mere 3.8%, on average, of people who view emails on their laptops or desktops click on at least one link. But only 2.7% of people who look at emails on their mobile devices click on at least one link.

Mobile readers also click on fewer links — 42% fewer than desktop or laptop users and 30% fewer than tablet users:

• Desktop or laptop users click on an average of 6.7% of links
• Tablet users: 5.6%
• Smartphone users: 3.9%

3. Links can discombobulate people.

Why?

• Readers will likely read the link first. As a result, they’ll read the sentence out of order, writes Spyridakis. That makes it harder to understand.
• The more links on a page, the harder it is for users to answer test questions in a study, writes Jared M. Spool, CEO and founding principal of User Interface Engineering.
• The more embedded links on a page, the harder it is for visitors to find what they were looking for, Spool’s research found.

4. Links can lead web visitors astray

External links can also take visitors to another site. (Not that visitors don’t know how to do that without a link.) And that makes some folks shy away from including external links.

Plus: Following embedded links “can be the web’s equivalent of traveling without an itinerary,” write P. Lynch and S. Horton in the Yale C/AIM Web style guide.

Link writing resources

Ready to write better links? Learn how to:

• Polish your link writing
• Write links that aren’t too long or short
• Avoid overlinking
• Format links

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Sources:

“Impact of Mobile Use on Email Engagement,” MailChimp, Aug. 8, 2017

Michael Bernard, Sprint Hull and Denise Drake, “Where should you put the links? A comparison of four locations,” Usability News, Jan. 10, 2002

Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Atlantic Magazine, July/August 2008

Jason Fry, “Maximizing the values of the link: Credibility, readability, connectivity,” Nieman Journalism Lab, June 7, 2010

Amy Gahran, “External Links from Stories Are a Service, Not a Threat,” Poynter, updated March 3, 2011

Patrick J. Lynch and Sarah Horton, “Imprudent Linking Weaves a Tangled Web,” Computer, July 1997

Lynch and S. Horton, “Yale C/AIM Web style guide,” 1997

Marieke McCloskey, “Writing Hyperlinks: Salient, Descriptive, Start with Keyword,” Nielsen Norman Group, March 9, 2014

Laura Miller, “The hyperlink war,” Salon.com, June 9, 2010

Laura Miller, “Yes, the Internet is rotting your brain,” Salon.com, May 9, 2010

Jakob Nielsen, “Trust or Bust: Communicating Trustworthiness in Web Design,” Nielsen Norman Group, March 7, 1999

Kara Pernice, Kathryn Whitenton and Jakob Nielsen; How People Read on the Web: The Eyetracking Evidence; Nielsen Norman Group; Sept. 10, 2013

Matt Ritchel, “Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price,” The New York Times, June 6, 2010

Jared Spool, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Carolyn Snyder and Terri DeAngelo: Web site usability: A designer’s guide (PDF). User Interface Engineering (North Andover, Mass.), 1997

Pegie Stark Adam, Sara Quinn and Rick Edmonds, Eyetracking The News, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, 2007

Jan H. Spyridakis, “Guidelines for Authoring Comprehensible Web Pages and Evaluating Their Success” (PDF), Technical Communications, August 2000

The post Why writing links well is so important appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Here’s one secret of successful marketing copywriters: They steal.

Especially headlines. If a headline’s been proven to work in the past, good direct mail copywriters will use it again and again.

How could you adapt these headlines, from 2001 Greatest Headlines Ever Written ,to your campaign?

• The people reading this will end up with your money
• The five most costly mistakes in business: How many of them are you making?
• A new breed of speaker is popping up everywhere
• When the government freezes your bank account, what then?
• Can you pass this money test?
• Some good news about the coming tough times
• If you’d rather put money in your pocket than watch TV …
• Would you like to take in $140 after supper?
• Chicago man reveals a shortcut to authorship

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Source: Carl Galletti, 2001 Greatest Headlines Ever Written, Info Product Sites Inc., 2003

The post ‘They laughed when I sat down at the piano …’ appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

One way to avoid repeating yourself in your news headline and deck: Answer “What happened?” in the headline and “Why?” in the deck.

These USA Today headlines demonstrate this approach. I include the leads here to give you more context for the story.

The post What happened? Why? appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..